What Did I Do To My Wireless Internet?

I have a Linksys router, 54mbs 2.4 ghz G-style old school router. I have a Netgear USB antenna for my son’s PC downstairs. Recently my ex-wife lived with me briefly and in a fit of pique, I tried to disable her laptop from connecting and only succeded in disabling my boy’s PC downstairs, along with my PS3 and Wii’s connectivity.

I am not certain what I did, but it seems to me that the router is no longer “broadcasting” in a way that the Netgear antenna can pick up. The computer downstairs identifies the network availability, but cannot connect.

What do I do? I tried using the router’s IP addy to reset to factory defaults but unless I did something wrong, it doesn’t seem to work. I need to get my wireless internet working again. Any suggestions would be extremely helpful. Thank you.

There’s usually a very small recessed reset button somewhere on the back of the unit that you would hold in with a paper clip for ~30 seconds or so. That will reset everything to factory defaults. Make sure to set up at least some sort of password protected encryption, though.

ETA: Hold in the button with the unit plugged in and turned on.

The only way you could have blocked your son’s PC from the router I can think of is by filtering his MAC address. I have the same linksys router, and in the router’s setup under “Wireless”, there are settings for “Wireless MAC filter”. Disable filtering there, and you should be fine.

Thanks guys. I tried the reset button already with no luck. I will try the Mac address filtering thing when I get home. Maybe that’s what I did. I was pissed and a little drunk when I blindly made changes to the thing so I don’t recollect exactly what I did.

I have seen some routers where the MAC address filtering control is a little unclear, and you can either disable or enable everything in the list (or do no filtering). One is the inverse of the other for machines with addresses that are not listed. You may have simply got the dialog backwards. Which is easy to do.

If the PC, PS3, and Wii all can’t connect you might have just changed the wireless password, or set one if there wasn’t one already. Try changing the wireless password in the router and devices.

If the reset worked the name of the wireless network will probably have reverted back to “Linksys” with no password. If the reset didn’t work you might not have held in button in long enough, which you sometimes have to do for five to ten seconds. The lights on the front will usually change in some way to let you know the reset took; I seem to recall the Linksys routers have a “diag” light of some sort that should light up.

Resetting the router will clear out any security settings you have in place, so be sure to set the wireless encryption to at least WPA (not WEP which is easily crack-able) and change the default password for logging into the router.

Something is just not right…PLEASE HELP!

My son’s PC downstairs is detecting the presence of the network (along with a couple of my neighbor’s) but instead of the network name (New Network) its listed as “Native Wifi Default Profile”

It will not connect to it.

When I mouse over the connection it says:

Native Wifi Profile
Signal Strength: No Signal
Radio Type: Non broadcast
SSID: New Network

I assume the fact that the 800 whatever number isn’t listed in the “radio type” is the source of the issue. Please help me fix this.

Thanks in advance.

I just spent two hours on a computer with that same problem, with no joy. The best I could determine is the Netgear adapter is responsible for the “Native Wifi Default Profile”, which will connect to the router, but won’t connect to the internet. Other wireless computers have no problem.

I am going to try a new, non-Netgear USB wireless adapter.

My issue is that it used to work just fine…until I stupidly changed some settings. I restored everything to factory defaults then put in my SSID name and WEP key…I don’t understand what’s happening.

The default profile is in the Netgear wireless utility somewhere. Try deleting and recreating it.